Debugging the Adult World: A Python Allegory About Personhood

Eurie H — Mon, 18 May 2026 06:45:41 +0000

The code is beginner-level Python.

The bug is not technical.

The bug is moral.

"""
The People Many Forget to Love — Python Version

Poetic / satirical Python code.

Requires Python 3.10+ because it uses `str | None` and `list[str]` type hints.
"""

from dataclasses import dataclass


@dataclass
class Human:
    name: str
    passport: str | None
    visa_status: str | None
    labour_value: int
    vulnerability: int
    dreams: list[str]
    wants_to_be_loved: bool = True


class AdultWorldSystem:
    def __init__(self):
        self.allowed_words = [
            "eligibility",
            "compliance",
            "risk assessment",
            "urban capacity",
            "national security",
            "labour shortage",
            "public resources",
        ]

    def classify(self, human: Human) -> str:
        # Very adult logic: personhood depends on paperwork.
        if human.passport and human.visa_status == "approved_permanent":
            return "person"

        if human.labour_value > 80:
            return "essential_worker_but_not_too_essential"

        return "case_number"

    def calculate_worth(self, human: Human) -> int:
        # Warning: this function is morally broken by design.
        # It represents how systems often calculate people.
        worth = 0

        if human.passport:
            worth += 50

        if human.visa_status == "approved_permanent":
            worth += 50

        worth += human.labour_value

        # Vulnerability is administratively inconvenient.
        worth -= human.vulnerability

        return worth

    def explain_cruelty(self) -> str:
        return f"It is complicated because: {', '.join(self.allowed_words)}."

    def process(self, human: Human) -> dict:
        label = self.classify(human)
        worth = self.calculate_worth(human)

        return {
            "name": human.name if label == "person" else "REDACTED",
            "classification": label,
            "worth": worth,
            "official_reason": self.explain_cruelty(),
            "actual_reason": "fear + possession + classification + exclusion",
        }


class ChildWhoStillHasAHeart:
    def review(self, file: dict, human: Human) -> None:
        print("\n--- CHILD REVIEW STARTED ---")

        print(f"System says: {file['classification']}")
        print(f"System worth score: {file['worth']}")
        print(f"Official reason: {file['official_reason']}")

        print("\nChild asks:")
        print("Why does a person need paperwork to be fully human?")
        print("Why is usefulness recognised before personhood?")
        print("Why is care called naïve, but cruelty called policy?")
        print("Why did the system redact a name and call that order?")

        if human.wants_to_be_loved:
            print("\nBug found:")
            print("Human is not a case_number.")
            print("Human is not cheap labour.")
            print("Human is not a risk profile.")
            print("Human is not REDACTED.")
            print("Human is a whole universe.")

        print("\nPatch applied:")
        file["name"] = human.name
        file["classification"] = "beloved_person"
        file["worth"] = float("inf")
        file["official_reason"] = "No one is born a case number."
        file["actual_reason"] = "The system was afraid to love properly."

        print("\nUpdated file:")
        for key, value in file.items():
            print(f"{key}: {value}")

        print("--- CHILD REVIEW COMPLETE ---\n")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    worker = Human(
        name="Someone Who Built The City",
        passport=None,
        visa_status="temporary",
        labour_value=100,
        vulnerability=90,
        dreams=[
            "a bed",
            "a lamp",
            "a place to return to without fear",
            "to be seen as a person",
        ],
    )

    world = AdultWorldSystem()
    file = world.process(worker)

    child = ChildWhoStillHasAHeart()
    child.review(file, worker)

https://substack.com/home/post/p-197157040

Sometimes I look at Earth and feel very confused.

Not intellectually confused.
Not in the way adults are confused when they say things are complicated.

I mean confused like a child standing in a room full of people who have all agreed to do something strange, and nobody will explain why:

Why does this person get to enter, but that person has to wait outside?

Why does this child get a school, and that child gets a border?

Why does this woman clean the city, but the city does not belong to her?

Why does this man build the house, but cannot afford to sleep in it?

Why does one person’s suffering become “national security”, while another person’s suffering becomes “illegal”?

Why is some exploitation called economic development?

Why is some resistance called not knowing one’s place?

The adults would probably say:

It is more complicated than that.

Of course.

It is always more complicated than that.

There are nations, borders, laws, visas, passports, household registrations, labour systems, migration policies, security concerns, public resources, urban capacity, economic planning, historical conditions, geopolitical realities.

So many beautiful adult words.

So many serious words.

But if you peel them back, very often you find the same old things underneath.

Fear.
Possession.
Classification.
Exclusion.
Superiority.
Protection of interest.

Human beings have made these things sound grand. Almost elegant. Almost inevitable.

But they are not elegant.

This is what I find most heartbreaking about the ways of the world:

Who was born where.
Who holds which passport.
Who has which household registration.
Who is allowed through the door.
Who must queue.
Who is counted as a citizen.
Who is counted as labour.
Who is counted as risk.
Who is counted as cost.

It is an old script.

The costumes change. The language changes. The documents become more sophisticated. The stamps become digital. The fences become policy.

But the story is still similar:

Mine. Yours. Ours. Theirs.

This is supposed to be maturity.

We are told that cynicism is maturity.
Coldness is realism.
Exploitation is efficiency.
Inequality is natural.
Borders are rational.
Not caring too much is wisdom.

How about asking different questions:

How can human beings live more freely?

How can there be less humiliation?

How can the places of birth decide less of a life?

How can care, love, movement, belonging, and safety stop being trapped behind documents and borders?

How can a person arrive somewhere and not spend years proving that they are allowed to be fully human?

Now in 2026, much of the world behaves like this:

It stamps.
It sorts.
It rejects.
It verifies.
It deports.
It delays.
It calculates the value of a person.

And then it calls this order.

Eligibility.
Status.
Legal residence.
Public resources.
Urban capacity.
National security.
Migration settings.
Household registration.
Labour shortage.
Compliance.
Pathways.
Risk assessment.

The words sound so reasonable.

So adult.

So calm.

But when they land on a human body, they often mean something very simple:

You may work here, but you may not have equal rights.

You may pay tax here, but you may not receive equal protection.

You may care for this society, but this society may not care for you.

You may be needed, but not recognised.

Your labour is absorbed.
Your personhood is... uncertain.

The rule that says you may exist here, but not too completely.

The rule that says your body may be useful before your life is recognised.

In China, the rural migrant worker may build the city, cook for the city, deliver food across the city, clean the city, and raise the city’s buildings from dust. But because of household registration, their child may still be treated as not fully belonging to the city’s schools, hospitals, and welfare systems. UNICEF China wrote that in 2020, 138 million children in China were affected by migration, including 67 million left behind by migrating parents, particularly in rural areas.

Imagine that.

A child learning absence as a normal weather.

A child whose parents are alive, working, loving them, sending money home, and still not there.

Not because they do not care.

Because the city needed their hands more than it welcomed their family.

In Qatar, migrant workers helped build the spectacular architecture around the World Cup: stadiums, roads, hotels, security systems, the shining face of a global event. Amnesty International reported that migrant workers continued to face difficult and precarious working conditions, and that promised remedies remained inadequate even after the tournament.

The world watched football.

Someone else had already spent years under the sun.

Someone else had slept in crowded rooms.

Someone else had sent wages home.

Someone else had become infrastructure.

In Italy, migrant farm workers pick fruit, vegetables, and grapes inside landscapes that tourists call beautiful. In July 2024, Italian police rescued 33 Indian farm labourers from alleged slave-like conditions in Verona province; according to Reuters, they had reportedly been made to work seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, for four euros an hour, after paying large recruitment debts.

In the same year, the death of Satnam Singh, a 31-year-old Indian farm worker, shocked Italy after he was reportedly abandoned after a machinery accident.

A country can have vineyards.

Wine.

Light.

Tourists saying how beautiful everything is.

And somewhere inside that beauty, a man’s arm is severed, and he is left as if his life were a problem for someone else to manage.

In the United Kingdom, too, the language is often tidy.

Care work.
Seasonal work.
Shortage occupations.
Sponsorship.
Skills.
Vacancies.
Routes.

A country grows old, and someone has to care for its elderly. Someone has to wash the bodies, change the sheets, lift the frail, sit beside the lonely, and keep the rooms of ageing life from becoming too silent.

Many of those people are migrant care workers.

They arrive with hope, debt, courage, and a promise of work. But in the UK, the sponsorship system can also make workers frighteningly dependent on the employer who holds their visa. A 2025 UK Public Accounts Committee report found that the Skilled Worker visa system’s sponsorship model made migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation, with widespread evidence of debt bondage, excessive hours, and exploitative conditions. UNISON has also reported cases of migrant care workers paying large fees for promised jobs, only to arrive and find little or no work, while others faced wage deductions, poor accommodation, and fear of speaking up because their immigration status depended on their employer.

Imagine that.

A person comes to care for the old.

To help someone else’s mother sit up.

To help someone else’s father eat.

To hold the hand of a stranger at the edge of life.

And still, their own life can be quietly leveraged through a contract, a sponsor, a debt, a visa.

The country needs their tenderness.

But the system can make that tenderness precarious.

In New Zealand, too, the language can be very gentle: seasonal labour, primary industries, skills shortages, temporary migrant workers, Recognised Seasonal Employer schemes. But even there, in a country that likes to imagine itself as decent, Employment New Zealand has a dedicated migrant exploitation page, explicitly reminding migrant workers that they have the same minimum employment rights as New Zealand workers.

Even the need to say this is revealing.

A person can be invited to pick the fruit.

But not always invited into the full imagination of care.

Everywhere, the logic is similar.

They are not without contribution.

That is the lie.

The truth is the opposite: they are often too useful.

Because they are useful, the system wants them close.

But because full recognition would be expensive, inconvenient, politically risky, or emotionally disruptive, the system does not want them fully inside.

So the system makes a narrow door.

Come in as hands.

Come in as backs.

Come in as hours.

Come in as service.

Come in as care.

Come in as cheapness.

But do not come in as a whole person.

They need your hands, but do not want your face.

They need your body, but do not want your life.

They need you to keep the city moving, but do not want you to become part of the city.

They need you close enough to serve, but far enough not to belong.

And then ordinary people are trained to accept this.

Not because ordinary people are evil.

Often because they are afraid.

The urban person is taught to fear the rural person.

The citizen is taught to fear the foreigner.

The documented migrant is taught to fear the undocumented one.

The middle class is taught to fear the poor.

The person who has a small piece of safety is taught that someone else’s safety may take it away.

What if they get the same rights as us?

What if resources become scarce?

What if the border opens?

What if our children have to compete?

What if our advantage disappears?

So the people at the bottom begin guarding the gates for the people at the top.

Everyone watches everyone else.

Everyone becomes nervous.

Everyone becomes slightly cruel in the name of survival.

And the real beneficiaries can remain upstairs, watching the frightened people below divide themselves into smaller and smaller categories.

This is how discrimination becomes common sense.
This is how indifference learns to sound reasonable.

By making love look irresponsible.

By making care look naïve.

By making equality look like a threat.

By making the suffering of others feel administratively necessary.

I think the saddest thing is not that human beings do not know how to love.

I think we do.

I think human beings have always known, somewhere in the body, that another person’s pain is not completely separate from our own.

A baby knows this.
A mother knows this.
A stranger who stops on the street because someone has fallen knows this.
A person who hears another person crying through a wall knows this.

We know.

The problem is that many systems train us not to love too much.

Do not be too sympathetic, because sympathy slows down efficiency.

Do not come too close, because closeness ruins classification.

Do not be too soft, because softness may disturb order.

Do not look at the other person too fully, because once you see them, it becomes much harder to use them.

This is what many systems do. They do not only distribute resources.

They distribute who is allowed to be loved.

Citizens are more lovable.

The wealthy are more lovable.

The documented are more lovable.

The urban are more lovable.

The useful are more lovable.

The obedient are more lovable.

Those without status, without money, without papers, without voice, are turned into numbers, labour, cases, burdens, populations, risks.

But no one is born a case number.

Every person sacrificed by a system was once a whole universe.

They also had a mother.

They also had a childhood.

They also were afraid.

They also wanted to be held.

They also wanted a bed, a lamp, a place to return to without fear.

They also wanted the world to say:

You are not a problem.

You are a person.

And you are loved dearly and sincerely.

She lies in bed, looking at the moonlight and the stars, imagining that one day the world might be equal.

Somehow, she is still that child who has not yet been trained by the world into indifference.

Outside the window is a shared world: vast, distant, and still possible.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-196612161

https://substack.com/home/post/p-197157040

Written by a small person who has walked around the Earth, seen too many systems marginalise people through different kinds of documents, and finally could not help writing a letter to all the adults of this world.

No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, republished, adapted, translated, scraped, used for AI training, or commercially exploited in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author or the author’s authorised representative.

The child takes the whole calculator away and says,
“No. This person cannot be measured like that.”
file["worth"] = float("inf")

DEV Community: Eurie H

Debugging the Adult World: A Python Allegory About Personhood